


Detained

by Sita_Z



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Gen, McCoy interacts with Vulcan children, Political aftermath of Nero's attack, Vulcan Children, Vulcan Culture, detention centers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 05:03:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15574383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sita_Z/pseuds/Sita_Z
Summary: After the destruction of Vulcan, the political climate on Earth changes into one of distrust and hostility against Vulcans. A short piece told from the perspective of one of the youngest survivors. Cameo by McCoy.





	Detained

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you reading ‘Bondmate’, don’t worry, it will be updated soon, so please stay tuned. This is a one-shot inspired by recent events.
> 
> ###
> 
> Vulcan phrases based on the Vulcan Language Dictionary (starbase-10.de/vld/):
> 
> kahswan: rite of passage undertaken by Vulcan children at about seven years of age  
> kohmin: human, humans  
> ko-mekh: mother  
> sa-mekh: father  
> t’ved: Vulcan day (18 Vulcan hours long; equal to 1.057 Earth days (25.3 Earth hours)  
> kreyla: a Vulcan breakfast food resembling biscuits; a flat bread-like food

* * *

 

Surek did not cry.

He was Vulcan. Vulcans did not cry.

Perhaps his eyes were wet sometimes, and perhaps he hid his face in his blanket once in a while, using the fabric to soak up the wet trickles, but that was not crying.

Not like some of the others, the youngest ones. They were only three or four years old, not near- _kahswan_ like Surek, and they sobbed loudly, open-mouthed, snot-streaked.

The _komihn_ were helpless in the face of their tears. Some of them came in and picked up the little ones, put their arms around them and patted them, but that only made the children cry harder. They were afraid of the _kohmin_ and not used to being touched in this way. They needed their parents to place gentle fingers on their psi points, sending waves of wordless reassurance through the parental bond.

But their parents weren’t here. Surek’s ko-mekh was Gone, like all the others, like his uncles and aunts and grandparents and cousins. Like his brother Selyar. Like their planet, or so the older children had told him. He still didn’t believe it. How could an entire planet disappear? It was not logical.

His ko-mekh was Gone, however. He felt it in his mind, an empty aching void where the parental bond had been. Ko-mekh had disappeared into the dark, to the place where the katra went when the body had stopped. But his sa-mekh was alive. Surek could feel him sometimes, could sense his big calm mind and the thoughts of comfort he tried to send through the parental bond. Sa-mekh was alive and somewhere close, somewhere in the _kohmin_ place. But he could not come to see his son. Surek knew this. If sa-mekh had been able to, he would have come and sat beside him, and they would have grieved for ko-mekh and Selyar together.

_The kohmin do not allow it_ , Keref had said. Keref was fourteen, one of the oldest. It was logical that he would know and understand what was going on. _They believe we did something to provoke the attack on our planet. Our parents are under arrest. Starfleet is investigating._

Surek was not sure what ‘investigating’ meant, but he did not ask. The older children might think him a fool for it. He imagined his sa-mekh in a room with many _kohmin_ , who stared and asked questions and shouted. Maybe investigating meant shouting. The _kohmin_ did that – they shouted and yelled and laughed with their mouths wide open, unbelievably rude. They touched one another incessantly. One _kohmin_ lady had _grabbed Surek’s hand_ when she had led him into this room. She had said something to him, but her translator had not been working, and all he had understood was “…your bed”. He remembered the word from his Standard lessons at the learning center back home. His bed was a mattress on the floor, one of many. He had asked her where his sa-mekh was. She had not understood him.

Surek did not know how long he had been in the room. His innate time sense was not fully developed, and the rising and setting of the alien sun outside the barred window meant nothing to him. How many _t’ved’lar_ had passed? He did not know. _Do as they say_ , his sa-mekh had told him, shortly before the _kohmin_ had separated them at the spaceport. _Do as they say and do not allow fear to overcome you. Remember, your clan is always with you. It is only logical that I will see you soon, my son._

Only logical. His sa-mekh would not lie, and yet so much time had passed and all Surek had seen was _kohmin_ come and go. The children were not allowed out, unless to go to the adjoining bathroom. That was a point of contention between the _kohmin_ and themselves. The _kohmin_ had strange contraptions installed in there, pipes fixed high up on the walls that released a stinging spray of water onto an unsuspecting bystander’s head. They called them _sh’au’r_ and wanted the children to go stand under them. No one would, of course. Any sane person knew that civilized people knelt in a water basin to wash. Lacking basins, the children tried to wash in the sinks, but the _kohmin_ said it wasn’t good enough. Some of them made the children go stand under the _sh’au’r_ , and laughed their rude laughs when the youngest ones cried.

Surek had never cried when it was his turn, but he hated the _sh’au’r_. It was too cold and the spray hurt his skin and got into his eyes. His sa-mekh would have told the _kohmin_ that it was not a logical way to get clean, but Surek did not quite dare. Sometimes, the _kohmin_ behaved as if they were insane, yelling or laughing or pulling strange faces for no logical reason. Surek still wasn’t sure it was safe to be around them.

Some of them were less intimidating than the others. There were two _kohmin_ ladies who looked to be about his grandmother’s age. They came every once in a while with books and padds and ‘board games’. The children called them _T’Kehr_ , teacher, although the ladies insisted that their names were An’i and T’Resa. They taught Surek and a few other children a game called _Monopoly_ , which had very strange and illogical rules, such as going to jail for no reason other than that a randomly drawn card said so.

Then again, Keref pointed out, all of them in this room had ‘gone to jail’ for no logical reason he could discern. Surek expected An’i and T’Resa to reprimand him for his insolence, but they only looked sad.

The games and books they brought were a welcome distraction from the mind-numbing boredom of the place, even if they were in Standard and written in the strange horizontal script the _kohmin_ used. Keref and T’Piy sometimes agreed to read one of the books to the younger children, translating simultaneously from Standard into Vulcan. Surek enjoyed the strange tales, even if they often made little sense. They reminded him of warm evenings on the flat roof of their house, when ko-mekh had read _Falor’s Journey_ to Selyar and him. She had played the _ka’athyra_ for them and told them that they were good sons.

_You respect your elders, you learn your lessons and you do not fight. This house is blessed._

No, Surek had hardly ever fought with Selyar, and if they did, they made sure ko-mekh did not find out. Now they were both gone, and Surek wished Selyar was here to fight over the last piece of _kreyla_ (not that the _komihn_ had _kreyla_ or anything like it). He wished ko-mekh would come and take him home, illogical as it was. Because home was gone, or so the older children said.

Those were the times when he went to his bed and hid his face in the blanket. He did not cry, of course. He was still Vulcan.

Surek did not know if forty or eighty _t’ved’lar_ had passed – the room had an illogical way of stretching time endlessly – when everyone began to fall ill. The youngest ones were first, lying on their beds and shivering with fever. The older children cooled their hot foreheads with wet rags and brought them water from the bathroom. The little ones would not be comforted and whimpered, crying for their parents. No one said a word to the _kohmin_. Vulcans took care of their own – so the children had been taught by their parents, and they acted accordingly. But one by one, the older children succumbed to the illness and there was a time when they could no longer hide it.

Surek woke in the middle of the night, his throat sore and his head numb with fever, to a group of _kohmin_ wielding flashlights and talking in their loud, unrestrained way. One of them held little T’Leru in his arms. She seemed unconscious, her body limp and tiny in his arms.

Surek understood only a few words of what they were saying. “… damn it… all of them… no idea what… ”

He turned over, trying to get back to sleep, when one of the _kohmin_ men came over and shone a flashlight into his face. He said something of which Surek understood only the last word. “… buddy?”

Surek blinked in the bright light. ‘Buddy’ was an affectionate term in the _kohmin_ language, or so Keref had told him. The man did not seem to be scolding him for being awake.

Still, better be safe. “I apologize,” he said in his mother tongue, trying for a respectful tone even though his voice was almost gone. “I will go back to sleep at once.”

The dark-haired man muttered something and fumbled with a tiny black contraption clipped to the front of his Starfleet uniform. “… understand me now?”

Surek studied the translator on the man’s blue shirt. He had always been curious about it, but had never dared to go near one of the _komihn_ to take a closer look. “I understand you, sir.”

“Good,” the man said. “How’re you feeling, buddy?”

“Fine,” Surek said automatically. The sudden onslaught of light and movement had worsened his nausea, and he wished for the _kohmin_ to go away. He would not be able to hide his condition much longer.

“I’m not so sure you are.” The man shone the flashlight at him again. “You don’t look so-”

Surek turned away, but not quickly enough. To his mortification, the splash of vomit hit the man’s shiny Starfleet boots and sprinkled his black pants with the carrot soup they had been given for dinner.

“Oh Christ,” the man said. Surek wondered if he was calling for one of his co-workers.

“I apologize…”

“Hey. Hey buddy.” The man knelt down, and did not seem to care about the mess on the floor. “It’s okay, you’re sick. No need to cry.”

“I do not cry,” Surek said. “I am Vulcan.”

“Yes you are,” the man said. “Gotta tell you though, I would be crying too if they locked me up in this goddamn hellhole and I got sick on top of it.”

Surek stared at him. “You are an adult. You should not cry. It is not logical.”

The man nodded. “Right you are, it’s not.”

“Then you should not do it.”

“Sometimes people can’t help being illogical.”

“Vulcans do,” Surek said, wiping his face on his blanket. “We are always logical.”

“Of course you are,” the man said, in a gentle tone Surek had not heard from any of the male and few of the female _kohmin_ in this place. “Well, buddy, d’you think it would be logical to get you out of here? Take you to see your dad?”

Surek hid his face again, quickly, because of course he wasn’t crying. He heard the man talk to the other _kohmin_ , and this time he _was_ scolding, telling them that it was ‘a goddamn shame’ and someone was going to be ‘torn to shreds’ by the media.

He did not understand what the man meant, and was sure that it had little to do with logic, but for once he did not care.

He was going to see his sa-mekh tonight.

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, has estimated that more than 1 million children are behind bars around the world. Read more: www.hrw.org/world-report/2016/children-behind-bars
> 
>  
> 
> Please let me know what you think!


End file.
